London plans to go Digital with the Official Internet Domain for the City

A virtual London experience is about to commence next year is the British capital joins in the league of a handful of other global cities in launching their own official online domains. The cities would have their personal online domain names, giving them a unique virtual identity. Visitors to the websites would be able to get all kinds of information on visiting and finding accommodation at the city. The Mayor’s office is hoping that this would be a definite step in further fortifying the tourism structure to the city. The mayor is keen on exploring the unique identity of the city following the centuries of evolution. The decision to start out in dot com is an extension of this exploration in identity.

The ICANN is the world standard body for overseeing the naming conventions on the web. This body keeps track of every single website name registered on the internet at a daily basis. The authorities at ICANN gave the go-ahead to the London Mayor’s office to have a unique domain identity for the city. Along with the British capital, a few other major cities of the world are also in the bid to get their unique domain names. These cities, New York, Vienna, Brussels, and Berlin also got the necessary permission from the web-naming administrative body. This would mean that the official webs

The new convention implies that by mid next-year, websites would be able to use the .london suffix at their sites. According to the mayor, this would be a definite psychological boost for the companies to associate themselves with the global branding of the city. This would also help the city in establishing a unique digital presence, said the mayor Boris Johnson in a statement. Johnson is desperately looking for building the brand image of the city in an increasingly competitive global online marketplace. He also looks at the permission as an opportunity to help in generating funds as webmasters would apply to use the .london suffix. These funds would also be crucial in investing for the development of the city.

The Europe vice-president of the ICANN, Nigel Hickson elaborated the current domain naming status in the online world. He explained that apart from specific country domains like the .uk, presently the online world has 22 generic domains, which also includes the highly familiar .com. He stated that ICANN continues to receive domain naming requests from different quarters. He mentioned that the organization also received domain name requests like .music and .tree, besides private organizations looking forward to using their company’s name.

However, Hickson also revealed that a sea-change is about to begin in the online world as the number of unique names is going to skyrocket abruptly. He confirmed that ICANN is presently considering the allowance to at least 1000 unique generic names from the next year. Hickson pointed out that running an online entity for registering and selling domain names is an overall expensive affair. He expressed hope that the new thrust on domain names would improve online business and the overall internet experience drastically.